Eat This Word: Boiled Peanuts

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WHAT? Dixie Dorito. With their quirky Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue, Matt and Ted Lee brought this Deep South treat to the attention of New Yorkers less than a decade ago. The Lee Bros. Catalogue offers lots of tips about the snack, not to mention an “I brake for boiled peanuts” T-shirt. Their peanuts, the siblings promise, “are guaranteed to turn any party into a cultural event.” To make the snack, raw unshelled peanuts (either fresh “green” or dry) are boiled in salted water for as much as two hours. The resulting snack is closer to edamame than to roasted peanuts, and, like edamame, is eaten by popping open the shell and slurping the peanut and salty brine. In many parts of the south, boiled peanuts are sold as a roadside snack. In Hoppin’ John’s Lowcountry Cooking, Southern food expert John Martin Taylor wrote, “No one knows the origin of our singular treat, but to those who love them, as I do, there is no better snack.”